Peek-a-boo!

Incidentally, we love the dog door.

You know that he’s saying “this is my chair…find your own!”

What do you think of your dad’s website for the past couple of months?

Hmm.

Tonight was London’s graduation night from puppy school. He had to pass his final exam, which consisted of “watch me” (my biggest concern, but he got it on his second attempt), sit-stay, down-stay (he’s a pro at both), “leave it” (he grabbed the off-limits treat the first time, but it was after leaving it for a little bit; he got it right the next time), and come when called. He had to shake to get his diploma.

Here he is, in his cap! No gown, though…

Later on, he discovered the joy of the papasan chair in the office. I like the way that it looks like he’s got a prehensile tail he’s using for balance.

He likes rubber balls a lot better than tennis balls, and we do too (they last longer and they don’t abrade his teeth over the long run like tennis balls would). Here he is, chomping down on one while in the papasan.

Taken the day our fence was completed. That’s a tired dog right there.

Relaxing for a bit with Aunt Bode.

Notice the paw sticking out from under the cushion?

I remember the days when he took up maybe half of a cushion…

Back by popular demand!

Why yes, I do enjoy a nice cigar every now and then…

Gitchee gitchee goo!

His “I’m happy to be outside” face.

I can’t fit on my baby bed anymore!

No leash can hold me!

Pick it up, Daddy!

Kelly and I have decided that we’re not putting up any more pictures of London on this site. We talked about it, and decided that there were too many reasons to stop.

First, it was just too time-consuming. We have a hard enough time keeping up with him, much less taking pictures of him. Think about how frustrating it is to think you’ve got a great shot of him chasing a stick, only to see you got a tip of a brown tail and a whole bunch of nothing else. When he finally does settle down, we’re scared to take a picture for fear he’ll wake back up and start racing around again.

We also had to take into consideration his feelings. The poor thing’s less than 4 months old! How would you like getting a camera shoved into your face at any moment’s notice when you’re that young? It’d be traumatic! Did you see his face in my “under the table” shot? That wasn’t cuteness, my friends…that was fear. When we thought about it, we decided that we couldn’t put him through that kind of pain any more.

So, I’m sorry, but I’ll just have to tell you about how big London’s grown, or the cute pose he made the other day, without any visual reference on this site. It’s for the best, really. I think that he’ll be a better dog for it.

Ball? Stick? Why should I have to choose?

We haven’t gotten many pictures of him panting. This is the first one.

Looking out the window on one of his first trips. I think that we were heading to the park for the first time with him.

This one’s just too cute, isn’t it?

For perspective, I’m the one taking this picture, stretching my arm out as far as I can. He already can spread out from my feet to the middle of my chest! He’s going to be a big ‘un…

Brianna…this is what eventually became of Squid. He was retired immediately after the picture was taken. A new Squid has taken his place.

Tonight, we registered our little boy with the AKC. Incidentally, we actually have full registration, but I don’t think that we’ll be taking advantage of all of that.

As part of this, we get the option to name the dog. Obviously, you know the name that we’re calling him, but we wanted to give him a full name. We didn’t have the right to use the breeder’s kennel name in his name, but that’s OK because we really weren’t planning on giving him a “kennel name” anyway.

All right, so what’s his name, you ask?

London Cartwright German.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous entry, London is named after Jack London, one of my favorite authors. Initially, I wanted to have his second name be one of London’s dog names. But after looking around, all we could find were Buck (from Call of the Wild), White Fang, and several Inuit and other native names that I didn’t really like well with London. So I finally decided to look up Labrador itself, and found the town of Cartwright. It’s the sixth-largest town in the province of Labrador, and I liked the way it sounded against London. So Cartwright it was!

Our dog is a music lover, apparently. We have bought a little radio for him to listen to during the day when we’re gone, and it seemed to have worked, because Kelly told me one day that he behaves better in the mornings if she puts the television on a music video channel. So that’s what we do now…CMT in the morning.

Well, I guess that he’s decided that he wants to be a more active consumer of music. Today, as I was eating my lunch, I noticed him getting onto my computer, which had a web browser open with Google as the active page. I got him off of the computer, then looked at the screen to see “cd” entered into the search box.

I think I need to tell him about iPods and such. There are much better ways to have music now.

Anyway, on to the pictures. These are real pictures, with sometimes-witty commentary for your reading and viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

A couple of weekends ago, London took his first road trip to see his paternal grandparents for the first time. As part of the trip, he got to meet the other dogs in the family. Particularly of interest to him was Barney, one of their two Labs. This picture fairly well sums up the activities of the weekend for the two of them. Incidentally, Barney has the patience of a saint.

It’s not a big surprise that he absolutely loves Kongs. Especially when they’ve got peanut butter and kibble inside. What dog doesn’t?

Yes, that’s him actually lying on the top of the couch cushion behind me. I guess the sly grin on his face is due to the fact that he’s getting away with being behind one of us on the couch, something that we swore we wouldn’t let him get away with.

This was a one-in-a-million shot. He’s actually underneath our living room coffee table in this picture. I didn’t want to flush him out of there by making a big noise, so I just reached down with my arm and blindly took a shot, hoping for the best. The result owns me so much, the large version of this picture is now my desktop image.

Yes, he actually is holding that huge thing in his mouth.

Awww…

What you didn’t see was the part where he picked up a cup in his teeth and raked it back and forth across the bars.

He really enjoys laying on the vents when they’re blowing hot air.

I’m helping daddy blog!